Expert guide to Cervinia

This is Italy’s most snow-sure resort in the lee of the mountain Italians call Monte Cervino, better known to the rest of the world as the Matterhorn. Cervinia's high altitude – 2,050m in the village and 3,480m at the top lift station – means that top to bottom snow is virtually guaranteed throughout a long season that runs from November to the beginning of May. It’s also open for summer glacier skiing and snowboarding, as well as for weekends in October.

When it opened in 1936, the resort was called Breuil. But Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, decreed that the name should be changed to Cervinia to reflect the Italianate glory of the mountain above it.

The easy gradient of the seemingly never-ending slopes allow beginners and wobbly intermediates to gain enormous confidence in an extensive high-mountain area.

Overview

Cervinia and the linked village of Valtournenche provide a wonderful snow-sports playground – boy and girl racers will enjoy the length of the perfectly groomed runs.

While this is far from being the prettiest resort in the Alps, more modern buildings are, style-wise, sympathetic to their beautiful surroundings. However, Cervinia's nucleus of pre-World War Two buildings reflects the austere imperial style of the time and the hotchpotch of hotels and apartment blocks that followed during the remainder of the last century does nothing to enhance it.

The most convenient mountain access from resort is by the six-person Cretaz chairlift from the nursery slopes. This avoids a stiff uphill walk through town, up lots of steps, to the alternative -– the gondola and cable car base for the ascent to the mid-mountain base, Plan Maison.

Anyone bored by the benign gradient of Cervinia's local slopes can climb the lift system and cross the frontier into Switzerland for the more demanding linked slopes of Zermatt, reached from the far side of the Klein Matterhorn mountain (known as Little Matterhorn, in reference to its larger neighbour 7km away) up on the glacier at the top of the lifts in Zermatt.

There are exciting long-term plans afoot to create a link with Cervinia's neighbouring resort of Champoluc, however these are currently on hold.